


About Power

by madwriteson



Category: Colors in the Dreamweaver's Loom Series - Beth Hilgartner
Genre: A goddess commits social security fraud, F/M, Post-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madwriteson/pseuds/madwriteson
Summary: Isaac Marchbanks tries to explain the power dynamics of the psychiatrist/patient relationship to his soon-to-be-wife. The Trickster finds this whole thing a little silly, but is willing to indulge him.
Relationships: Isaac Marchbanks/The Trickster
Kudos: 2





	About Power

Isaac Marchbanks had never expected to reach a point in his life where he would be helping someone commit social security fraud, but here he was. Perhaps it was only on a technicality—as far as everyone _else_ in this reality seemed to know or care, the woman he had first met in the guise as a goddess called the Trickster _was_ Alexandra Scarsdale and always had been—but he knew, and she knew, and every time he thought too hard about it, it filled him with an itching sense of unease.

Of course, that wasn’t the only thing that left him uneasy. He and Andy—he had started calling her Andy, because it was close enough to the way she had first introduced herself to him, as Antekkereh, and was a reasonable enough nickname for Alexandra—had started planning their lives together and had immediately run in to what he perceived as an insurmountable roadblock and which Andy couldn’t quite get her mind around as a problem.

“Why is it that we cannot get married immediately?” she asked, after he had hemmed and hawed at her suggestion that they go about seeing to their wedding post haste.

Isaac shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you’re Alexandra Scarsdale now. And Alexandra Scarsdale was my patient. Whatever the Wanderer did to fix you to her old life, she didn’t change that.”

Andy tilted her head to one side and fixed him with a no-nonsense expression. “I do not see why that would make it difficult for us to get married.”

“It’s about power.” Isaac flopped bonelessly into one of his kitchen chairs and leaned forward, chin in hand, elbow propped up on the table top. “Bad enough that everyone will think you’re more than a decade younger than me, but marrying a patient!”

Andy hid a smile and a laugh in a cough as he mentioned the age on her new ID. She might as well laugh, he thought. He didn’t know how old she actually was, but it wouldn’t surprise him if the number of years she had existed for was several orders of magnitude larger than his own age. “Explain it to me. What makes it bad?”

“Well, for one, I could lose my job, and might never be able to work as a psychiatrist again.” And he loved working as a psychiatrist. Difficult work, it was true, but when he made a breakthrough with a patient, when he managed to help someone make their own life better...

That seemed to make an impact on Andy. She reached out and took his free hand in hers. “That would be a shame.”

Isaac gave her a wan smile and squeezed her hand. “I’m not going to say it’s hopeless. But psychiatrists really aren’t supposed to get emotionally entangled with the people we’re treating. We interact with them at their most vulnerable, you see, and if we take advantage of it…”

Andy nodded. “And it would not matter to other people that I have all the power here,” she teased him. Never mind that he had claimed power over her soon after they had first met; the truth was that even as a mere human, she was both larger and stronger than he was, and he knew for a fact that she could still read his mind.

“I think… if we give it a few months. I’ll hand Alexandra’s case over to one of my colleagues—if you’re willing to go through with an evaluation?” He gave her an anxious look, and she nodded. “Then I think we can pass you off as having received sufficient treatment, and maybe in a month or two it won’t look so strange if we start seeing one another.” At Andy’s appalled look at the implication that they might not be able to see one another at all, he added “Publicly, I mean! You’re welcome in my apartment any time you want to come by. But we should probably keep our distance on campus, is all.”

Andy gave him an indulgent smile and lifted his hand to her mouth, pressing a warm kiss to his knuckles. “Very well, my Isaac. I will not pretend to understand the strictures of this world, but I will abide by them.”

And she probably would, he found himself thinking.

But she would also, without a doubt, find a way to make her interpretation of them as unique as she was.


End file.
